The Game by Disturbed --Levana is one crazy a$$ B*tch…and she doesn't like to lose…

♫Is she not right?

Is she insane?

Will she now run for her life

In the battle that ends this day?

Is she not right?

Is she insane?

Will she now run for her life

Now that she lied to me♫

OVERALL RATING

4.3/5 STARS

A-

⇝My Thoughts⇜

Lots of info in this one about Cinder, Cress, Winter, the Wolf/Man hybrids, and about how and why, Levana is such a lunatic. When I asked someone if I needed to read this before reading Winter; I was told I really should…and…I'm really glad I did!

***PLEASE EXCUSE ANY SPELLING ERRORS. I LISTENED TO THIS WHOLE THING ON AUDIO, SO I’M NOT SURE HOW EVERYTHING IS SUPPOSED TO BE SPELLED.***

We all know Queen Levana as the evil dictator who is trying to take over Earth, but here is her past. In this novel, we get to back things up and see the teen years that shaped Levana into the Queen we all love to hate. We get to see her overcome her sister’s taunts and rise to power. It’s an interesting journey, to say the least!

From the moment this book was announced, I knew I’d have to read it. I adore the Lunar Chronicles and it’s still quite a few months before Winter finally arrives, so I needed something to tide me over. I was also very apprehensive. I hate Levana. I want the bitch to die and die bloody. I want to watch as they torment her and kill her slowly. I want that, really I do. I was worried that we’d get redeeming charactaristics here, worried that I’d start to sympathize with her, maybe even feel sorry for her and I did not want that to happen. For all of those with the same fear, that will not happen. Yes, Levana has a sad childhood, being tormented by Channary, her elder sister, but that doesn’t really gain her sympathy because she is already well on her way to being a psychopath from page one of this. And her actions get increasingly disturbing as the novel continues. She is obsessed with her guard, Evret, and she takes that obsession to the extreme. She isn’t initially obsessed with ruling the kingdom, but it eventually shows up and once her mind latches onto that idea, nothing will deter her. The woman tries to murder her own niece, a goddamn toddler.

The rest of the cast is really insignificant. We get brief glimpses of Selene and just a few moments with Winter, the only two besides Levana that really play a role in the rest of the series. The only two I really care about. I felt bad for Evret because he is forced into a terrible situation and he has no way out. Levana will never let him leave and have his life with Winter. That is never a possibility, so he soldiers on with his life and tries to make due with what he has.

I think I was doomed to feel mediocre about this from the start. I am very (VERY) character driven and since I just want Levana to die, I wasn’t really invested in her life or what she did. There were a few tense moments with Evret or the moment when she “kills” Selene that I did want to keep going, but for the most part, this wasn’t something that held my attention. Again, this isn’t due to a lack of awesomeness on Meyer’s part, just a lack of interest on mine.

I originally won a copy of this gorgeous hardback from GoodReads and planned to read through it, but then I saw that Rebecca Soler was doing the audio edition and I’d have to listen to it. I’ve been listening to the prior books with my husband anyway, so why not enjoy this together as well? To really show how little of my interest this held, let me just put it this way. This audiobook is tiny, less than 7 hours and it took us 2 months to finish it because we just had no interest in getting through it.

It gets three stars because it isn’t bad. It had it’s interesting moments and I did like learning a bit more of Levana’s backstory, but I just didn’t care enough overall to love it like I have with the rest of the series.

Audio Notes:Rebecca Soler is now my husband’s favorite narrator. She has done a wonderful job with this series in particular. My lack of enthusiasm here is not due to her performance. Though she doesn’t really get to stretch her vocal muscles as much as I’d like here because it’s mostly Levana’s narration and her voice is the only one needed, I still think she does an excellent job.

***Thank you to Goodreads and Feiwel & Friends for providing me with a hardcover copy of this in exchange for an honest review.***

I can't deny that I feel bad for Levana in this book, but even from the first page of the book I could tell that there was something not quite right with this girl, and it wasn't just because I knew she would turn into one of the scariest villains I've read about. Even knowing that I was surprised by just how uncomfortable it was to be in her head. I guess I went into the book expecting to be able to sympathize with her, at least at first, but I couldn't. I pitied her, yes, and I felt bad for her, but her emotions just felt a little bit off, which prevented me from truly being able to care about her. And while all of that could almost have been because I knew how evil she was going to end up, I really wanted to be able to care about her so I could mourn the person she used to be while hating who she became.

The only time when Levana felt normal was in the flashback to when she and Channary were children. When we saw the moment that Levana was nearly destroyed. I think it was that moment that led to her emotional and mental instability. The indifference of her parents probably didn't help, and the fact that she was living in such a debaucherous household, with indifferent parents, but there are some people who could have lived in those kinds of conditions and still end up a good person.

I was surprised and delighted to see that even in all of her other evil pursuits, Channary still loved Selene (aka Cinder.) Levana worried that Selene would grow up to be as awful as Channary was. That was one of the things she used to justify her murder of the three-year-old, yet Selene had Winter and Evret Hayle as good influences, so I don't think she could ever have been as awful as Channary, especially, though I hate to say it, because Channary died, removing the most prominent bad influence from Selene's life. Yet, though I don't think Cinder would have been nearly the evil person her mother was had she grown up in the palace, I still think that her upbringing as a poor, overworked, hated cyborg on earth and without her powers of manipulation probably helped her to be a much better person then she would have been had she grown up on Luna. I guess we'll never know.

I enjoyed seeing the way that Jacin Clay, Winter and Selene as children, and the way they already seemed to fit together as a family. I enjoyed this book and don't mind it as a novella but I didn't love it, and I don't think that it was necessary (granted I have yet to read Winter, but still.)

I read a lot of mixed reviews on this book. A lot of reviewers warned readers this book was only for diehard series fans. I will say that this differs from the first three books in the Cinder series. Absolutely. It kind of has to, right? I mean, it's a book completely written from the villain's POV. I won't lie. There was a lot of sadness. Levana's life was pretty sucky. Her family life, the "accident" that left her disfigured, the tragic love of her life. All of it was horrifically sad. Unlike the other books in the series, there was no humor... no light, heart-warming banter. Nope. And on that count, those reviewers would be correct. This was not like her first three books in the series, but if it had been, Levana wouldn't have turned out to the be villain she'd come to be. As always, Meyer's writing is exquisite, and I found myself completely pulled back into this world. This series is in my top five all-time favorite YA series. If you like YA, if you like refashioned fairytales, or if you like even the slightest bit of science fiction, you should check out these books!

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